Alan Keyes

Presumably there actually were some doe-eyed optimists who thought the shotgun marriage of Alan Keyes and the Illinois Republican Party would be mutually beneficial. Ah, the perils of quickie courtships. Republicans, to the extent their moderate and conservative factions agreed on anything, agreed they wanted a player who could put to rest their embarrassing search for a U.S. Senate candidate. Liken that to not wanting to show up at the high school reunion without a date. Keyes, by contrast, wanted...

In 1968, Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley famously declared that "The policeman isn't there to create disorder; the policeman is there to preserve disorder." Last year, former Gov. Rod Blagojevich said, "I know the truth of things and I have nothing to fear but the truth." In both instances it was pretty easy to whack your way through the tangled verbiage and figure out what they were trying to say. But it's still unclear to me just what Daley's son, current Chicago Mayor...

By Clarence Page, a member of the Tribune's editorial board | September 5, 2004

To news-hungry journalists at the otherwise heavily scripted Republican National Convention last week, U.S. Senate candidate Alan Keyes of Illinois was the gift that kept on giving. Days earlier, he had called for the repeal of the direct election of senators ("Let the state legislatures do it.") and for exemption from federal taxes for the descendants of slavery, which would leave out his nationally popular Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, a child of a black Kenyan father and a white...

On Aug. 8, 1876, Thomas Edison received a patent for his mimeograph. In 1945 President Harry Truman signed the U.N. Charter. Also in 1945 the Soviet Union declared war against Japan during World War II. In 1953 the United States and South Korea initialed a mutual security pact. In 1974 President Richard Nixon announced he would resign following new revelations in the Watergate scandal. In 1990 President George W. Bush warned Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that "a line has been drawn in the sand."

On Aug. 8, 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte set sail for St. Helena to spend the remainder of his days in exile. In 1844 Brigham Young was named to lead the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after the killing of Joseph Smith. In 1876 Thomas Edison received a patent for his mimeograph. In 1937 actor Dustin Hoffman was born in Los Angeles. In 1942 six convicted Nazi saboteurs who had landed in the United States were executed in Washington, D.C.; two others received life imprisonment.

By Dennis Byrne, a Chicago-area writer and public affairs consultant | September 6, 2004

With self-righteous indignation, Illinois Republican "leaders" at the Republican National Convention last week fumed at what Alan Keyes, the GOP's Illinois candidate for the U.S. Senate, was doing to the party. After what the leaders themselves have done to the party, it's good to see that something still stirs their souls. What had them in a lather about Keyes this time was his calling homosexuals, including Vice President Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter, selfish, hedonistic sinners.

Political attack dog's fun fangs The fun began in mid-May, when all signs indicated that seethingly eloquent conservative attack dog Dan Proft was about to announce his candidacy for governor. I dropped him a quick line. "That'll be fun," I wrote. "Thankfully, I'm used to the counterfeit objectivity characteristic of most of the Chicago press corps," he fired back humorlessly. "The bullies with bylines for bankrupt outlets in this town who confuse their liberal orthodoxy for intellect only encourage me."

Declaring that his campaign strategy is dependent on controversy, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Alan Keyes told the state's top GOP donors at a recent closed-door meeting that he plans to make "inflammatory" comments "every day, every week" until the election, according to several sources at the session. The sources said Keyes explained that his campaign has been unfolding according to plan and likened it to a war in which lighting the "match" of controversy was needed to ignite grass-roots...

NEW POLL: A new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found Hillary Clinton leading Barack Obama by 5 percentage points in Pennsylvania, a far cry from the double-digit margins she held earlier. The poll also found Clinton trails Obama in Indiana and North Carolina. NADER IN CHICAGO: Consumer activist Ralph Nader brought his independent presidential campaign to Chicago on Tuesday, railing against state election laws that he complained have prevented him from gaining ballot access and criticizing the media for...

By Rick Pearson and John Chase, Tribune staff reporters | January 16, 2005

State Rep. Angelo "Skip" Saviano was mad. His face red and his nerves frayed, Saviano glared incredulously at the political creme de la creme of the Illinois Republican Party arrayed around the horseshoe-shaped table in the Union League Club, Chicago's posh and historic rendezvous for the rich and powerful. The Illinois Republican State Central Committee once seemed as well suited to the Union League as the painting by Monet that accents the club's wood and leather sitting rooms.

How bad -- how ugly, how far over the line of decency -- is it to invoke Barack Obama's middle name in attacking him? It's so ugly and so far over the line that not even Alan Keyes in his most overwrought, spittle-flecked moments did it during his 2004 Senate run against Obama in Illinois. Keyes, the banty Republican imported from Maryland to heap invective on Obama, seemed to have few limits. He called his opponent a "hard-line Marxist" and a supporter of infanticide. He said...

'There's not a single constituency of true conservatives that doesn't have one of John McCain's knives stickin' out of our backs.' --GOP presidential candidate Alan Keyes 'I suppose it won't hurt the economy, but it's in many senses like giving a drink to an alcoholic.' --New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, on the federal $168 billion economic stimulus package 'This is such gross incompetence. I really have not in my 10 years seen anything like this on the domestic front.

When I moved to Chicago in 2001, I considered myself a Democrat, but I would not claim an allegiance to any party now. I heard that Mayor Richard M. Daley had been in office since the 1980s and I knew of his father who reigned before him. It's an unevolving machine and I am reminded of itscomplacency each day that I take my deteriorating Brown and Red Lines to work and hear of the construction that is going to bring it to a crawl in April due to...

In his keynote address last month at the Call to Renewal's conference on `Building a Covenant for a New America,' Sen. Barack Obama told fellow Democrats they could no longer ignore the connection between religion and politics. Following is an excerpt from his speech: During the 2004 U.S. Senate general election I ran against a gentleman named Alan Keyes. Mr. Keyes is well-versed in the Jerry Falwell-Pat Robertson style of rhetoric that often labels progressives as both immoral and godless.